


The Boy Who Lived

by Bil



Series: Faces [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24760447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bil/pseuds/Bil
Summary: Ginny fell in love with the Boy Who Lived first. She’s ashamed of it now but she wouldn’t change it because it brought her to where she is now.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Ginny Weasley
Series: Faces [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722553
Kudos: 9





	The Boy Who Lived

**Author's Note:**

> Set in DH, between the last chapter and the epilogue. Given that Harry, Hermione, and Ron have always been The Trio, how does Ginny fit into that?

Ginny fell in love with the Boy Who Lived first. She’s ashamed of it now but she wouldn’t change it because it brought her to where she is now. One of her friends told her once how lucky she was to be married to the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived. Ginny just nodded and smiled and didn’t bother to correct her. After all, she’d made that same mistake once. But now she understands what Ron meant.

It had been some stupid, childish argument and she’d wailed: “You don’t understand! _You’re_ friends with the Boy Who Lived!”

Ron had looked at her. “No,” he said firmly. “I’m friends with Harry.”

At the time she thought he was stupid, but she gets it now.

She’d fallen in love with the Boy Who Lived because he was brave, he was a hero, and he’d saved her from Tom Riddle. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy unless you were hunting Voldemort,” she’d told him when she was young, innocent, and a whole lot more stupid than she’d thought she was.

Now she knows better. The Boy Who Lived might like chasing Voldemort, but she isn’t married to him. She is married to Harry, who carries scars she can’t see and fights his way through nightmares he won’t describe to her.

It is impossible for her not to love Harry; he’s so sweet and kind and loving. He’s also stubborn, pig-headed, and apt to bouts of idiotic chivalry, but that’s all right. The Boy Who Lived might be perfect, but Harry isn’t. He doesn’t need to be. She loves him – him, not the Boy Who Lived – as much because of his faults as despite them.

He loves her too. The knowledge is as natural and certain to her as breathing. He would die for her, sacrifice his comfort for her happiness... and yet she knows that she doesn’t quite come first for him. It hurt once, and she even thought of leaving him, but she’s grown beyond that.

Harry wouldn’t agree with her, he’d tell her that she is the most important thing in his life, his eyes alight with warmth and love. He’d think he was telling the truth. Ginny knows better.

Ron and Hermione come first. They always have, they always will. If Harry needs to talk he goes to them, not Ginny; to Ron if he wants sympathy and strategies, to Hermione if he wants answers and solutions. If he needs help or reassurance or backup – then he goes to them first. Always. They’re a trio and nothing, not marriage, not death, can change that. Certainly not one Weasley girl with more courage than sense and more sympathy than understanding.

She’s accepted that. Knew when she agreed to marry Harry that this was how her life would be. She loves him enough not to mind. Harry, not the Boy Who Lived.

When she thinks about this, Ginny knows that she’s learnt the most important lesson of all.


End file.
